She Burns
by FirenzeFuomo
Summary: "It didn't just come to him, you know. Research like that takes years. Years." Roy asks Riza a question he detests hearing the answer to.


**For those of you who follow me as a writer, I've decided to re-write my Petrosol, Paper, and Fireworks collection and post each drabble separately. This was the latest chapter, and it is my kickstarter to the drafting process. I hope you enjoy my casserole of angst.**

 **PS, I started a Tumblr called Mabel Writes Royai with a URL of the same name with no spaces, so that's another place to easily access some of my work if you're interested.**

 **As always, and as any writer can attest to feeling, I would really love to hear any feedback you may have 3**

 **Eat up these feels.**

* * *

"It didn't just come to him, you know. Research like that takes years. Years."

He felt the knot in his stomach tighten. He feared it would unravel. When he asked her the question, he only expected a short answer, something succinct and precise, and it would solve a inquisition he'd always carried.

But this was not a short answer, and answers that were not short, he learned long ago, would always precipitate something he'd learn to regret knowing.

"The reason he made the choice was to keep it protected," she continued explaining. He wished she wouldn't speak so objectively, like she was giving him a history lesson. "That was always the reason. He never expected to die, it's not like he decided to do it before he were to reach a deathbed, or to preserve it so he could peacefully deteriorate."

He couldn't look at her, or even nod to show he was listening. It was late. Her apartment was dark. The air just faintly held the scent of the whiskey on the coffee table.

Suddenly, he felt immense shame for never asking her before. Not even back then.

"So…" The infliction of objectively was gone with the word, and at her pause he knew himself to be a hypocrite because hearing her speak like this wasn't about her made things so much easier.

He felt her hesitation, and he knew what she was going to do. She was going to end the long answer as quickly as possible. She was never one to speak for too long about herself.

Yet he had asked her to.

"So, as you can imagine," she said flatly, "research grows. And I grew with it."

Nausea covered him. The shock of the words was towering and he placed his mouth in his hand, his elbow propped up by a knee, in response. Images flashed at him, ripping at his brain, unwelcome and unstoppable.

All that time, and he never knew. He was there all along, and he never knew.

He closed his eyes, as if that would help him to stop seeing.

 _Research grows, and I grew with it._

The thoughts attacked him like wolves, and at each new bite he felt the urge to open his mouth and say something, but he couldn't bear himself to even twitch. He knew the silence, the unmoving glacier of his body, must have made her feel all the worse. And it was this notion that ate at him the most, because even still, he couldn't find the words, and he knew he was the worst kind of person.

"Please don't…" she began to say. Her hard voice woke him, and he found himself numbly sitting up to look at her beside him.

"Don't what?" he asked dully. He could hear her breathing as she took several seconds to reply.

"I'm not sure," she finally said quietly, strongly. "Don't pity me. Don't be angry with me. Don't...I just..." She sighed in soft exasperation at her failure to articulate, and she glanced away.

"So, then...when, Lieutenant? Specifically. What age did he start."

Her brown eyes steeled as she stared at the table. There was a dim lamp on in the kitchen, and it's light bounced off the back wall and lit up the edges of her hair. She did not look at him when she spoke.

"Eight."

His hand came down with a force against the wooden table, knocking against it powerfully so it jostled both glasses. The dog that was curled up on a blanket jerked it's head up in alarm. The action shocked Roy even as his arm crashed down, but he couldn't have stopped himself if he tried, because at the word that came out of her mouth he felt such rapid and great fury that he didn't even have time to recognize the primal need to expel.

"Colonel…"

"All this time, all _that time_ , _dammit,_ and I regarded him as a genius. Maybe even as someone I respected, _genuinely_ , and he was...he was…"

"He _was_ a genius. And he was my father."

His voice turned sharp.

"He was insane, Ri-" He stopped himself. Her eyes widened, just enough for him to notice. He hadn't called her by her first name since the cemetery. Maybe it was this talk of the past, or maybe it was his unbidden and clouded anger. Maybe it was the whiskey. The tags on the dog's collar jingled as it realized there was no threat and it curled back into itself.

"I soon grew to an age to have had a say in consent…" she continued. If he hadn't been sitting beside her, he may not have heard her at all. "And each time, I consented."

"A ten year old, a twelve year old, a seventeen year old doesn't understand a situation like that, Lieutenant." He'd never had to remind himself to say her rank instead of her name before. The words fuming out of him were robust and angry. "He marred a child. And in turn, he made me mar one too."

He regretted saying it the second it slipped off his tongue.

She had been young then, nineteen. But she was not a child.

And nobody, not she nor Teacher, made him do what he had done.

"Don't disperse blame to you or him for my past when these things belong to me and me alone, Colonel. I can't write my own book and say someone else was responsible for the content."

" _You were eight, and then barely ten years later-_ "

"You swore to me you wouldn't bring it up again."

The words stopped coming, but his mouth was still open. She was staring at him with brows furrowed and eyes tired.

 _Let me do anything, Hawkeye, anything, to help you…_

 _Never talk about it, then._

 _...What?_

 _I don't want us to ever speak about this, because it'll only get in our way, and it will do nothing but distract you. I don't want to ever talk about it. Please...that's the one thing I want._

"But Lieutenant -"

"Please, Colonel."

He hated hearing that. He hated hearing her say please like that, because it meant she was becoming upon desperate, and he'd done that. How she must have ached.

His hand found it's way over his eyes. He didn't know what he was supposed to do with himself. Was the human body built to hold so much turmoil? He felt as though he could combust.

He was never a crier. Only a few times in his life could he recall shedding tears. This wasn't one of those times. No, he couldn't cry, even if he had wanted to. So then what? What was he to do with the storm brewing inside him, filling every single centimeter of his blood bones and matter?

His hand left his face and picked up the only thing that might be the answer, and poured it into his glass. He drank it.

"I wish you wouldn't have asked," she admitted, shaking her head softly. She reached out her hand, and he passed her the bottle.

"I almost wish I hadn't, either."

He was going to be plagued, he knew. By the memories of walking past her in the house, or saying good morning to her, or reading his books when he thought everyone was asleep, and wondering how he could have been so stupidly naive, wondering which of those times she was bleeding beneath her shirt. He heard the ripple of the whiskey puddling into her glass.

The bottle filled his hands again and the ripple poured down.


End file.
